Her early life was disrupted by war and the loss of her entire family. She spent years as a displaced person in Europe before arriving in Canada in 1953.[3][4] She graduated in Printmaking from the Vancouver School of Art in 1965. She Emigrated to Canada in the late fifties.[citation needed]
An early history of dislocation underpins Schmidt's work.[1] The tone of her work ranges from distraught and angst-ridden to whimsical. "[A]ll Schmidt's art manifests her paradoxical sense of whimsy and brutality, humour and despair, anxiety and fierce conviction."[10] She was "encouraged by postwar abstractionism surrealist juxtapositions and the general freeing up of aesthetic restraints."[9] In the later part of the 1960s, she focused on the expression of eccentric figuration. She moved from etching to lithography, screen printing and even a number of sculptures during the 1970s.[9]
She exhibited widely and received numerous accolades. Her printmaking was recognized internationally. In 1997 she was among 96 artists invited to participate in the 10th International Biennial Exhibition of Prints in Tokyo.[citation needed]
^"Obituary – Marianna Schmidt". The Vancouver Sun. Vancouver, Canada: Postmedia. May 30, 2005. Retrieved April 13, 2018.
^Dates and details of her life are not consistent across sources. A Dictionary of Canadian Artists gives her birthplace as Yugoslavia and the date of her arrival in Canada as 1957.